


Burned-Out Stars

by Nightwing_Hunter



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: -Ish, AU, Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Children of Earth Compliant, Children of Earth Spoilers, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Jack Harkness is not okay, M/M, Running, Suicidal Thoughts, TW: THIS FIC CONTAINS SUICIDAL ACTIONS, Vashta Nerada, and stuff, and they start sharing stories, and they start traveling together, neither is the Doctor, theyre both rlly depressed over lost love, to try to run away from the sadness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-10-28 18:03:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17792153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightwing_Hunter/pseuds/Nightwing_Hunter
Summary: “Love and loss are like a ship and the sea. They rise together. The more we love, the more we have to lose. But the only way to avoid loss is to avoid love. And what a sad world that would be.”—V.E. Schwab; A Conjuring of Light(Summary is in tags)THIS WORK HAS BEEN ABANDONED





	1. Love and Loss

**Chapter 1: Love and Loss**

Jack Harkness couldn’t move. He couldn’t walk throughout the cities and towns and roads, not without seeing  _ him _ everywhere. When he strode through a crowd, Jack would see him at the edge of his vision, but when he spun—wanting to see him,  _ needing  _ to see him—it was nothing but a trick from his tormentous mind. As if it were trying to construct something physical from a memory, or a dream.

A fleeting image—before he realized that it was nobody but a stranger. Before he noticed that the mouth curved in a slightly wrong direction, or the eyes were too wide, or the hair was just a shade too light. 

Jack was in his dark room in a city, curtains drawn and a drink in his hand. He didn’t know what city. He never did anymore. Jack was running from a memory, trying to find a place that didn’t remind him of the man he loved. 

He raised the drink as if toasting, and whispered, his voice hoarse, “I swore that I would never forget you. I guess this is what happens when I keep my promises.”

Except for the one about protecting him. The one about saving him. The only promise that he cared about, shattered like glass. His heart felt the same way—shattered. Like a vase that broke to thousands of pieces on a stone floor, impossible to put back together.

He wished he could just stop caring. Stop living. For once, Jack Harkness wanted everything to just stop.

 

The TARDIS was acting strange. Not timey-wimey strange, mind you, but more of TARDIS-strange. She seemed… unsettled. The Doctor ran around the console, flicking switches and toggling levers, a sheen of sweat sticking his hair to his head.

“ _ What  _ is wrong with you?” the Doctor asked, growing increasingly frustrated.

They were  _ going  _ to travel to an old kingdom called Castria, but then  _ she  _ had spontaneously decided to go the opposite direction, towards Earth. The last time she had acted like this was when he came back without— _ no, don’t think of her. _

The TARDIS made a wheezing sound in reply. 

The Doctor threw up his hands. “I thought we agreed! No more interfering. You  _ know  _ what happens when we do!”

She made another sound, and the lights turned red, as if she were angry. 

“You saw what happened to her!”

Another whirr came in reply. 

The Doctor glared at the console, hands on hips. He looked at her as if she were a misbehaving child.

“Okay,  _ fine _ . I’ll humor you. Why do you want to go back? And don’t tell me that it’s because of Martha or Rose or Donna,” he said.

The monitor showed an image—two men, one cradling the other on a stone floor, and the one on the ground… The Doctor’s blood ran cold. 

“Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”


	2. Like a Ship and the Sea

**Chapter 2: Like a Ship and the Sea**

It was silent. Not the right kind, not the quiet that, though its lack of noise, still felt lifelike—a breath held for a splinter of a second or a moment where wind didn’t blow. Not the comfortable pause of life, but a wrong sort of silence, as if instead of a breath held it was the air taken from lungs, stopped up in a bottle. As if instead of a moment without wind blowing, it was an eternity.

It always felt wrong here. The blackness always too dark, the silence too deadened, the pressure too cold. It was horrible, not as painful as the initial death, or even when the light came back, but it was so wrong, so  _ dead _ here that Jack hated it.

He craved it for the same reasons these days.

Jack used to claw his way out of the dark, holding onto the slivers of light that pushed their way through the deepness, clung to them like a child holding their mother.

After what had happened, he let the darkness keep him close, let his heartbeat stutter, then skip, then stop. He let himself go. Hell, he forced himself to step into the dark, needing the escape. He sought that escape over and over again, wishing that one day, he could stay in that ocean of cold shadow. 

Jack was in that darkness now, reveling in the disattachment. The world had long since retreated, leaving nothing but that ocean of quiet, of cold inky black.

But in the frozen, dark waters of death, the dying man heard a sound faintly, at the frayed edges of his senses. A sort of wheezing, groaning sound. A sound that was said to bring hope to wherever it travels. The sound of the Doctor’s TARDIS.

 

The sky seemed to be on the edge of a storm as the Doctor stepped from the TARDIS doors. The air was heavy and humid, as if the sky itself were imbued with tears. Crumbling ruins of buildings surrounded him—desecrated husks of their once glorious selves. 

Shadows and light danced on the broken windows, giving a foreboding glow to the buildings around the Time Lord.

He pulled out his sonic screwdriver, scanning the buildings around him for Jack. The screwdriver buzzed, echoing in the silent ruins. 

It was strange here, in an unsettling way—the quiet too deep, too tangible, the settling darkness around the Doctor unnaturally… lifeless, in a way. It was like a forest with no creatures, or a city devoid of people. 

The Doctor knew of certain places, and certain points in time, where nothing grew or flourished. There were places even he would not go. But those times and places, they were physically dangerous; they would bend and break and shatter any creature that dared step upon them. They were the places that sparked fear throughout the galaxy.

This ruin was not one of those places. _ It couldn’t be _ , the Doctor told himself,  _ not here. This is Earth; this is safe. _

Then why was nothing here? No wind, no people, not even a bird chirping. Why was it so quiet? 

As the Doctor wandered through the the buildings, listening desperately for more than the void-like silence, he caught sight of something—a shadow. A shadow that had nothing to cast it. A shadow that was not a shadow, because it couldn’t be, because it was the Vashta Nerada. 

And then it all of it came together.

“Oh, Jack,” the Doctor sighed.


End file.
